Chertoff: U.S. must stand behind anti-terror agents

August 30, 2009|By Sebastian Rotella, TRIBUNE NEWSPAPERS

WASHINGTON — Former Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff, who has a book out this week, warned in an interview that national security will suffer if counterterror agents fear that bosses will second-guess their front-line actions.

Chertoff said his book, "Homeland Security: Assessing the First Five Years," lays out a framework for defending the nation against the threats of the 21st century.

He spoke with a reporter in the offices of his security consulting company, the Chertoff Group. Following is an edited excerpt of the interview.

Q. Much of the conversation these days in the headlines is about things like shutting down Guantanamo, possible prosecutions of CIA interrogators, etc. Where do you stand in that debate?

A. What we owe the people who are at the point of the spear is certainty. If the country decides ... they only want to go so far in interrogation, that is a fair decision to make. Provided the following: If it turns out that we miss a plot, we don't get information that could be valuable, and something happens, and after the fact it emerges that had we interrogated someone more aggressively we would have gotten that information, then we're not going to have a commission that says: Hey how come you guys dropped the ball? How come you were too timid?

Q. You don't talk much in the book about detention or interrogation issues. There's a lot of criticism that there was excess, that there was abuse. How do you feel about that?

A. On the issue of detention, here's the problem we face. We pick people up on the battlefield in Afghanistan or other parts of the world. ... The normal rules in a criminal case don't apply.

Likewise you don't want to [read suspects their Miranda rights], ... because if you Mirandize people, you are effectively saying to them: Don't talk to us. ...[If] you need to know where the next attack is coming from and who's involved in it, you are denying yourself a major element of intelligence.

I think it's a reasonable criticism to say that we in the last administration took too long to get these military commissions and processes up and running. By waiting a long time to get that done, it kind of soured the process. On the other hand, I have to say, Congress has shown no interest in actually writing a set of rules and laws that would govern the problem of people who can't be prosecuted in a criminal court, maybe can't be prosecuted in a military commission, but are clearly too dangerous to release.

Q. In addition to terrorism, you write about this idea of groups like the Mexican cartels, or the (Central American) Mara Salvatrucha MS-13 gang, that have a destabilizing capacity.

A. What I have found in the 21st century is that a lot of our old categories really broke down ... (including) the idea that criminal organizations are radically different than other political players on the international scene. The truth is when you deal with groups like ... the (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), or some of the cartels along the northern part of Mexico, they are almost at the level of acting in a political way. They use violence for political purposes, they do threaten the stability of at least the local authorities. ... That to me is unfortunately the wave of the future.